Here's the poem: "The Trouble with Poetry." Excerpt: "And how will it ever end?/unless the day finally arrives/when we have compared everything in the world/to everything else in the world...."
I usually refrain from embedding song videos that only show a still image of the album cover, but that cover is worth gazing upon. Adorably absurd couple. The year was — need I say it? — 1969.
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70 comments:
Adorably absurd? Male celebrities and male murderers in prison routinely attract young female groupies. Also see Charles Manson.
How about labelling this the "Gold Digger of 1969" to update the "Gold Diggers of 1933"?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_Diggers_of_1933
GIrl (to herself):
This guy's rug is amazing!
A version of that girl was on the cover of every pop album of the sixties…herb Alpert and the tiajuana brass win the prize for best bevy of babes.
I like the Noel Harrison version of windmills on my mind.
White Rap.
The Velvet Fog.
I'm loving the smile/smirk on Mel's face.
That cover is giving me the irresistible urge to pepper my speech with words like "dig" and "man," because, you know man, I'm just digging that groove so much.
I’d always thought Torme’s nickname was “the Velvet Frog”, due to that excess flesh between his chin and throat.
"I'm loving the smile/smirk on Mel's face."
I'm thinking Pee Wee Herman.
The scarf!
The best thing Mel Torme ever did was a cameo on Seinfeld where he thought Kramer was retarded (because he had just got back from the dentist and his mouth was still numb) and brought him to fundraiser. Torme sings "When You're Smiling" to honor him as a very courageous young man. So funny.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xn-8l9psD18&t=1s
"I'm thinking Pee Wee Herman."
Me too!
"The scarf!"
You know he thinks he is something.
Finite domains is an argument against immortality.
I'm on the floor. We did that same basic chart w/ Mel in Jax with the symphony for a pops concert in about 1973(?) or so.
He was a pro's pro when we worked with him, but you had to treat Mel like the star he was in his mind (or so I was told) and we did just that.
What a coincidence! I have this song in a playlist I created a couple of weeks ago. I've been listening to it a lot lately.
The Pee Wee Herman character first appeared in an adult stage show and later HBO comedy. He had a sexual undertone long before being adapted for family friendly content. Then, Paul Reubens got arrested in a p0rn theater (1991).
"Nerds get the girls" is not a rare entertainment concept/fantasy. See the contemporary 1980s "Revenge of the Nerds" stealth sexual assault comedies...the commercial glory days of Hollywood...pre woke...
"What a coincidence! I have this song in a playlist I created a couple of weeks ago. I've been listening to it a lot lately."
But you probably have Dusty Springfield (or Noel Harrison).
It's like that Sci Fi story where the stars started to blink out one by one because some monetary in Tibet had automated the process of writing out all of the names of God, and finally reached the end.
Chat says the story was The Nine Billion Names of God” . (1953) by Arthur C. Clarke.
The reason I was listening to Mel Torme is that Meade sent me another track from the same album: "Happy Together." And I think he only sent me that because his previous text, related to the sunrise, was "How is the weather?"
For the record, the weather is: snowy.
I really don't like his voice. The Velvet Fog is descriptive, but not a compliment. The album cover is great, though. She wants us to believe that she wants him. He's also trying hard to convince us that she wants him. Neither are very persuasive.
She does have a magnificent head of late sixties hair. Country singers still had it piled on top of their heads at that date. As the ladies used to say, "The higher the hair, the closer to God."
" The album cover is great, though. She wants us to believe that she wants him. He's also trying hard to convince us that she wants him. Neither are very persuasive."
Yeah, what I texted back to Meade was:
poor mel torme is so unattractive
how much did they have to pay that lady to pet him
the beast
people today don’t understand “invest a dime”
boy is that album ridiculous
I'm going to recommend this version of Windmills: Vanilla Fudge.
To be fair, Mel looks like a fairly normal product of that era, when he's put alongside Liberace. When I saw the scarf, I looked carefully to make sure he wasn't also wearing a leisure suit.
Gotta go with Dusty Springfield on this song. Aretha, Dusty and Dionne are the great female singers of that era. Mel is better than Jerry Vale, though.
I will always associate “The Windmills of Your Mind” with Matt Drudge’s talk show. Late Sunday nights in the ’90s, with different versions of the song playing as bumper music.
Yikes. Mel Torme and Vanilla Fudge mentioned in the same post.
This is almost like the end of poetry. The comparing of so many things that we're down to Mel Torme vs Vanilla Fudge.
And I like it.
Small note, on that link to the Vanilla Fudge page, they apparently also did their version of "The Look of Love". What a weird few years we had there.
No fair making fun of the ridiculous fashions of an earlier era. We all dressed like that.
Vanilla Fudge was all about covering songs that were already a hit. Their biggest was "You Keep Me Hanging On," which had been a huge Supremes hit.
The just heavied them up as much as possible.
The track "She's Leaving Home" is a reminder of how few good covers of Lennon and McCartney songs exist.
The trouble with tribbles was a poetic ode to warming collectivism and fetal fascism.
Metaphor requires a pregnant use of the vehicle. (Tenor and Vehicle, terms from I A Richards)
Mel Torme fever! Catch it!
The fatal flaw of fetus is a feature of fascist fashion fulminating in the fulness of fomented farce.
Regarding the neck scarf: I think that's supposed to be cravat/ascot that's half untied. As in, he's getting ready for action with his lovely lady. Also see the later black male hip hop fashion of wearing pants very low with underwear visible.
But here, it's a Heffner Playboy attitude is presented in a mid-century white boy white bread style.
When i was younger i always got mel torme mixed up with tony bennett. As for the woman not wanting him, Paul Williams had to beat them off with a stick. Musicians are attractive. Even when they look like mick jagger.
Now that is a voice.
His voice is like butter.
He could sing any words.
Even beyond the people in the album cover photo, you can tell it comes from that late sixties era by the typography and the colors used.
For some reason I always picture Mel Torme as Pepe Le Pew
Ann Althouse said...
people today don’t understand “invest a dime”
I understand it as a reference to using a pay toilet. Is that what you mean here?
I don't think I've seen a pay toilet since the 60s.
There is a reference in "Death of Stalin" a terrific movie. The politburo is in a Kremlin men's room and Michael Palin as Molotov says "I think I'll spend a kopek while we wait"
John Henry
"Adorably absurd" or "absurdly adorable"? That puckish Tormé with the devilish glint in his eye may have something in common with Rick Moranis, but he's a long way from Moranis's impression of a totally exhausted, barely alive Mel Tormé.
We aren't quite at the point where everything has been compared to everything else, but it has been said that the possibilities of tonal music are exhausted (unlikely) and that criticism has gotten everything out of literature that's actually there (possible).
Mel may not have been a looker - but the pretty ladies were all about it.
"poem about poets and metaphors that talks about poetry going on until everything has been compared to everything else?"
Yet another downside of that misguided government program of putting all those monkeys in front of all those typewriters.
A question I asked Grok because I was listening to Mel Torme...
Now that you mention Grok, artificial intelligence poses an even greater risk of exhausting metaphor in that manner than all those monkeys.
The Manchurian Candidate had windmills in his mind.
Communist Chinese windmills!
I don't want to harsh the mellow but you don't "dig a groove", they're both verbs - you dig or you groove. Although you can feel groovy, you can't feel diggy because "dig" is active while "groove" is passive. Sort of like: "Give me the beat boys/and free my soul/ I wanna get lost in the rock and roll/and drift away" vs. "It's all fucked up, you dig, man?"
You never get over having taken Eng Lit in the glory days.
"until everything has been compared to everything else" Haven't we reached that point already, when now in ordinary speech like is like like?
Ella kickin' it with "These Boots..."
https://youtu.be/NKir6wg4bME?si=biAm-bsQ6-LFPqm_
Billy Collins asks the wrong question. The trouble with poetry, at least Collins' efforts, is not how it will end, but how it will begin.
Regarding Jack Kerouac's 1957 novel, On the Road, Truman Capote observed, "That's not writing, that's typing." Taking the cue, Quaestor says of "The Trouble with Poetry", that's not poetry, that's abuse of carriage control.
Here's the trouble with poetry: Too many poets think their discordant inner lives are interesting. Everybody is trying to be Emily Dickinson. Nobody is trying to be Edmund Spenser. Stop complaining. If you want to complain, fill out the form -- in triplicate. Poetry has become the nose ring of literature, the fuck you all!! shriek of the incapable. Next time, think of a simple story and set it to the music of English
Mel really wore an obvious Toupee didn't he? LOL.
When you look at the mediocre Pop singers of the 50s and 60s you can see why young people turned to Dylan and Rock and Roll.
...the stars started to blink out one by one because some monetary in Tibet had automated the process of writing out all of the names of God, and finally reached the end.
Obviously the Fed has way too much power.
"Give me the beat boys/and free my soul/ I wanna get lost in the rock and roll/and drift away"
I always thought it was "Give me the Beach Boys..."
Heh. It always seemed a little odd to me. Now it makes more sense.
Music just made for 8 track cassettes.
Something I learned way back in college is that a tenor with good range and piano skills is in the same ballpark as an electric guitar player when it comes to attracting women who otherwise would be way out of the guy's league. In his day, Mel did pretty well with the ladies.
Poetry is a victim of the attention economy. Few people have the time to read it and nobody takes the time and care to actually write significant poems, so it becomes very fragmentary and personal. If someone actually did write a 21st century "Divine Comedy" or "Paradise Lost" would anyone read it?
"I understand it as a reference to using a pay toilet. Is that what you mean here?"
"Happy Together" is not about using the toilet!
The line is "If I should call you up, invest a dime, and you say you belong to me and ease my mind...."
Mel Torme was married to four different attractive women, each of which lasted about a decade (more or less). The woman with him in that record cover photo is his third wife, Janette Scott, who was a British movie star in the '50s and '60s. In the U.S., she's best remembered for the horror film "The Day of the Triffids." (The song "Science Fiction / Double Feature," from "The Rocky Horror Picture Show," contains these lyrics: "And I really got hot / When I saw Janette Scott / fight a triffid that spits poison and kills.")
Incidentally, Janette Scott was two inches shorter than Mel Torme -- that photo appears to be staged with her standing and him sitting.
Enigma: "How about labelling this the "Gold Digger of 1969""
I ain't sayin she a gold digga / But she ain't goin with no broke Jew! CC, JSM
Caroline: "herb Alpert and the tiajuana brass win the prize for best bevy of babes"
Whipped Cream and Other Delights! CC, JSM
Mel Torme was to music what Joey Bishop was to comedy.
Yeah, the women's hairdo and face screams 60s.
Enigma: "Also see the later black male hip hop fashion of wearing pants very low with underwear visible."
I don't think that's a sexual signal - although if you have good abs, I suppose that's an extra. Rather, it signals that you don't have a gun in your waistband, so the po-po don't have an excuse to shoot you. Also a reason to cuss them out if they frisk you - "damn, man, you can see half ma ass - you know I ain't got nothin - what you friskin me for!?" CC, JSM
May also be an adaptation of one-size-fits-most prison denims in California. CC, JSM
Mel Torme Sings Fred Astaire is a good album. I don't like most of his others.
Wow! I hadn't heard that version in years. Thanks for posting. Sting’s version is the one I listen to the most. I’m going to track down the Torme version of “She’s Leaving Home”. He can hit the notes and I’d like to hear it.
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